A proper deployment of undersea instrumentation packages which are suspended a distance above the ocean floor creates times for concern for oceanographic data gathers. When strings of weights, instrumentation packages and floats are dropped over the side, or ejected from a submersible, the problems of entanglement and damage of the instrumentation are ever present. Spring-biased release mechanisms which eject anchors and floats can be jammed by sediment or marine fowling, particularly when too long a period has elapsed before the instrumentation is released. Corrosive interconnect links have been used in some applications with some success, however, too much or too little time might pass before a corrosive link is dissolved, so that meaningful data might be missed. In some instances actuations and releases of controlled, remote instrumentation packages have relied on acoustic signals, but this approach can be expensive and reliability might be impaired particularly when actuation is to occur after a prolonged period of inactivity. Maintaining an adequate power supply for responsive actuation, also might create problems where an active or semi-active release mechanism depends on a remotely originating signal.
Thus, a continuing need exists in the state-of-the-art for the deployment of a buoyed instrument package from the ocean floor which does not expose the package to damage during deployment and which reliably operates upon impact with the ocean floor.